christian@topaz.UUCP (01/30/87)
Vasu Murty asked a number of very important questions about the Resurrection. Let me try to deal with some of them. First, as you point out, the religious or theological significance of the Resurrection doesn't follow simply from the fact that someone was resurrected, since that had happened before without the person therefore being considered our savior. Your reaction towards this is going to have a lot to do with how you evaluate the accuracy of the Gospels as a whole. The scholarly studies I have read on the subject say that the earliest Christians considered the Resurrection primarily to be a divine endorsement of Jesus. That is, Jesus had claimed to be the Messiah, and God's raising him from the dead meant that God approved of Jesus and his claims for himself. One has to be a bit wary about using Acts as evidence for the earliest Christian preaching, but note that the sermon in Acts 2 talks about God raising Jesus up. Acts 2:36 seems to imply that this resurrection established Jesus as Lord. So in short, I'd say that this resurrection differs from others primarily because of the claims that Jesus had made about himself beforehand (and those the Christians made about him afterwards, one must say in all honesty). You comment on the "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me", and on the fact that Jesus was obviously afraid of death. You imply that the crucifixion was a defeat for Jesus -- defeat of a sort that would not happen to a real savior. First, note that "My God, ..." is almost certainly a citation of Psalm 22. (Indeed some have suggested that some of the details of the crucifixion scene are based on Ps 22. It's very clear that the author saw this as a quotation.) I think we are to assume that Jesus had the whole psalm in mind, but only had strength to quote the first few words. I'd say in general that the NT picture of Jesus, as he approached his death, is that he felt fear, would have prefered to avoid it, but accepted it as his duty. I don't see this as inappropriate for a savior. Would you feel better if he had wanted death? Orthodox Christian doctrine has always emphasized that Jesus was a human being with normal human reactions. His life was also the presence of God among us, but that doesn't alter the basic human situation. [I'm being fairly cagy in my wording because the simpler "Jesus was God" is likely to give a false impression to people who don't understand what the doctrine of the Incarnation actually means.] Note that Jesus never claimed to have any power on his own. Rather, he claimed that God did, and that God had called him to a special role. Jesus' relationship to his Father was one of obedience and trust, even as ours is supposed to be. Of course there were thousands of places he would rather be than on the cross. And maybe during parts of that day he even failed to see exactly how good was going to come out of what he was doing. But I think his citation of Ps 22 shows that he still trusted God, that even when he appeared to have been forsaken, it was part of God's plan. I think that attitude is perfectly appropriate. Your note worries me, because it implies that we Christians are managing to give a false impression of what we believe. It seems to imply that you see us as claiming that Jesus was some sort of superman, and that his death is inconsistent with that image. In fact, Jesus is seen as an ideal human, that is, as the model of what a human was intended to be. But he is *not* seen as super-human. As the model human, it is important that he be able to cope with defeat as well as victory. The Christian idea is that God raised him up from death, not that he was immune from death because the Romans didn't happen to have any kryptonite handy, nor even that he raised himself from death because of any inherent immortality that he had. His role as savior comes from two things, neither of what are inconsistent with suffering: - that his actions are also God's. This is a decision that God has made, not a consequence of some metaphysical difference between Jesus and other humans. - that only he, as the ideal human, is able to have a truly correct relationship with God. Our relationship with God is therefore vicarious, i.e. we are invited in some mysterious way to participate in his relationship with God. Please consider that the NT was written by Christians. Obviously the authors of the Gospels considered being the savior to be consistent with his death, or they wouldn't have included the death scene in that form. (The alternative is that they were such careful historians that they presented an account of Jesus' death that contradicted what they were trying to say in a very basic way. I assume you would not want to make this claim.)